REVIEW: ‘The Secret History’ — Donna Tartt

SPOILER-FREE

Ok, so I realise that this book has been reviewed and praised many times over, but I just had to jump on the bandwagon and write about it too; since I read this book just a few months ago, I’ve regarded it as one of my new favourites.

The story is about an elitist group of college students who, through the encouragement of their eccentric classics professor, escape the bounds of morality and wind up murdering one of their own classmates. This isn’t a spoiler — in fact, the book even opens by talking vaguely about the murder of Bunny. So if a book about murder isn’t a classic ‘whodunnit,’ what could Donna Tartt possibly be writing about in order to fill 600 pages? Well, the story is less about who killed Bunny, but rather about how the murder came to be, which I personally love.

The book is split into two main parts: the first part, leading up to Bunny’s murder, and the second part, the aftermath. What I love about this story is that the more you know, the more you want to know. Every time you feel like you start to get a grip on the characters, something will be revealed which makes you realise you don’t know them as well as you thought you did, making them even more alluring and interesting. This is partly because the narrator, Richard Papen, is in a similar position. He’s a bit of an outsider to the group, and it it almost feels like he’s only been let in to half of the story. I found myself thinking of Richard as the Nick Carraway of the book, something that I’ve noticed other people also picking up on. If you’ve read ‘The Great Gatsby’ you might understand what I mean — Nick and Richard both narrate someone else’s story; they’re just onlookers with a bit more of a personal view.

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

To me, this book is more than just the story within it. The atmosphere that was created within the book was so enticing and wonderful that I can’t help but think about it constantly, longing for a return to that world and that story, despite the somewhat unsettling nature of the book as a whole (but I worry that this is more of a comment on myself than on the book…).

Again, I could talk about this book for hours on end — but I’ll spare you from reading what would most likely be about 5 paragraphs of general gushing over everything I love about this book (e.g. Henry Winter), and hope that this might have inspired someone to pick up a copy of ‘The Secret History’ and enjoy it for themselves.

Thanks for reading,

Niamh x

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